Of Brightest Day and Pokemon

By Chris Troy

I’ll be honest. Aside from Diamond on the DS, I really haved played too many Pokemon games since the original red/blue for the OG, moose-killing size Gameboy (EDITOR MORGAN’s NOTE- Now I feel old. Back in MY day we had the of strained-peas colored original GameBoy that could kill THREE meese. And instead of Pokemon games, we had only sadness). On my best day, I could name about 100 of em, let alone attempt to catch them all. The franchise has endured for 15 years, selling well, and has been a constant staple of the US manga/anime/video game community. It has populated toy shelves as well, which means Forbidden Planet has a large selection of Pokemon toys and model kits based on the Black & White installments of the series currently in stock. To the left is a stock photo of Water starting type Oshawott, who aside from being CUTE AS HELL, reminds me of Achewood’s Philippe, an adorable Otter in his own right. I’m not sure if Oshawott’s attack set includes both the “Hello” and “Hug” moves, but then again he doesn’t spend most of his time hanging out with a speedo-wearing cat named “Raymond Smuckles”. Anyway, there’s a variety of pokemon plushies/cards/figures/manga currently in stock, as well as three hardcoverAchewoodcollections from Dark Horse, so if either of these otters interest you, come by and check them out!

Moving along, has the FPNYC Faithful seen X-Men:1st Class yet? It was pretty rad, and the best X-Men movie since X2! Sadly, there’s a severe lack of toys based on the movie for some reason, so I can’t go into it much more. But with Green Lantern around the corner, I can talk about the new Brightest Day toys. The 24 issue mini-series wrapped up last month, and I’m sure it’s repercussions will be felt upon the DCU until the late August reboot or whatever the hell DC is doing to ensure I end up reading more Image books. Always with the best timing,DC Direct has released the first of 3 planned waves of Brightest Day toys are on shelves, giving us 4 classic, lesser known characters not redesigned by Jim Lee.

Aquaman was revived at the end of Blackest Night, and had a pretty big role in Brightest Day. He’s sporting a Ivan Reis resdesign, one that’s based on the character’s classic look. As much as I preferred the Peter David/Morrison JLA-era Bearded hook-hand Aquaman, this design and figure is pretty solid, and is a good update. As king of the seven seas, Aquaman sports under 20 points or articulation and comes with a trident. Green Arrow was barely in the BD series, but had a new series launched under the Brightest Day banner. Sporting an updated design based on the Mike Grell Longbow Hunter look of the 80s, this is actually a really good spin on Ollie, despite how terrible(again, IMO) his new book was. Another solid figure, armed with a quiver and a bow and arrow. Hawkgirl/woman was murdered and revived for the 1000th time in Blackest Night, and gets and accessory-less figure with barely any articulation. Weak.

The highlight in this line, at least for me, was the Deadman figure. Brought back to life at the end of Black Night, this very much Alive-man figure can swap out heads to rock a Boston Brand head, and hold a Deadman mask. Simple, yes, but I like it. He only rocks a white-lantern ring in the sculpt, which is cool too. I imagine he’ll be in the most-demand of this wave, as he was a central figure in the best-selling series. And if any of these figures tickle your fancy, come pick them up ASAP for under $20 each before we sell out! Who know, by the next time we get any of them in, they could be featuring 90s Wildstorm era redesigns! 🙁